At the beginning of Full Medical, Old Bob mocks the series of ID cards that he must obtain from the U.S. government in order to get veteran’s benefits.  We actually have it pretty good in the old U.S. of A.  During my years in Colombia, I needed to carry a cedula, a picture ID card issued by the DAS, their version of the FBI, DEA, ICE, and probably a few others all rolled into one.  That was to ensure my safety during the times the Colombian government declared martial law or a curfew, so they said.  I suspect it really was a way to control tax scofflaws, since the ordinary Colombian also had to carry his cedula.  This is why I never had much problem with carrying it-everybody felt the pain.

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The horrors of greedy HMOs literally killing people continue.  Nixon may have been a scoundrel about a lot of things, but he probably caused more pain and suffering by saddling the American people with a huge albatross around their necks when he made the deal to initiate the HMO model.  I can just hear him say, “Imagine, my friends, we can actually make money by taking advantage of the sick!”  Fact: too many people are not covered at all, the worst being the case of uncovered children.

The techno-thriller Full Medical portrays a terrible future as far as medical coverage goes, but it is a logical extrapolation of our present situation.  How can we prevent it?

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Readers will find that my new novel The Midas Bomb has several scenes about exploitation of illegal immigrants.  This is one side of the issue, of course.

The other side is that these people are illegal.  They are breaking the law.

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A lot of my first novel is related to cloning-in particular, the cloning of human beings.  In spite of the many ethical issues involved, it’s fun to extrapolate far into the future when mankind is setting up the first interstellar voyage.  In this case, cloning human beings after the ship arrives at Epsilon Eridani might save a whole lot on what supplies need to accompany our space travelers on their long trip.  You could have robots as baby sitters until all the first set of newborns reach adulthood, then clone them, and so forth.

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In the techno-thrillers Full Medical and Soldiers of God, I change point-of-view (POV) through multiple characters.  (The POV of character X means writing as if you are in X’s head-especially thoughts, etc.)  Some writing coaches insist that you maintain one POV throughout a whole work.  I disagree, especially for most novels, where multiple characters vie for attention from the author’s pen.

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Putting “scherzos” into Full Medical and Soldiers of God was an experiment.  In Mozart’s symphonies, for example, a scherzo was a movement that was often light and jocular and intended to provide a coffee break from the real serious stuff.  In my two novels I used them to provide a break but also to provide information on the cultural milieu of the period that the characters were living in.

Let me know what you think of scherzos in writing.

Note: from time to time, I will post in this category comments about the craft of writing.  This is really for other authors, but I will try to define the technical terms as needed so that anyone can enjoy them.

So, just what is a techno-thriller?  First of all, a thriller is an action and adventure novel where the reader knows fairly well what’s going to happen (although the author may throw some plot twists in from time to time).  The reader just has to sit back and see how it all turns out.  It is not a mystery – you know the butler is going to do it.  Will Inspector Poirot be able to stop him in time?  It may be suspense – most thrillers have this ingredient.  A techno-thriller just throws a lot of science and technology into the mix.  Too much of the latter, especially if the science and technology is used to solve the protagonist’s problems, and you approach sci-fi.

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